I got a phone call from Stephan Zaffalon, the sweet young Austro-Italian with whom my youngest daughter Amelia has been knocking around Europe for the last several weeks. Anxiety palpable in his soft voice, he said, "First, I must tell you that Amelia is ok." That didn't sound good. I had been assuming that Amelia was ok. To be told that she was forced me to the immediate conclusion that shortly before he placed this transatlantic call, she might not have been.

Danny Kastner, a 39-year-old marketing technology firm owner from Boston, Massachusetts. Danny grew up in Cleveland where he left high school early to accept an academic scholarship to Cleveland State University. After earning his BA, Danny's creativity began to drive his academic and professional direction. He completed graduate coursework in music composition at Boston University, where he later joined the faculty, and studied at MIT's famed Media Lab. Danny's vision for combining art with commerce led him to develop several successful media and technology ventures. He is the founder, CEO and chief visionary for POPstick, a leader in innovating new media technologies. When Danny is out of the boardroom, he can be found writing and performing rock operas and symphonies. His musical talents have earned him four national composition awards.

Danny is cool because he wears his tie inside his collar instead of outside. I hope he stays in the show for a long time.

EVOLVING CONNECTIONS.
In Boston, Steve Garfield is practicing his own brand of citizen journalism.

His video reports at stevegarfield.blogs.com/videoblog are as local as they come, ranging from coverage of this summer's Democratic National Convention to a video of a downed power line on his street. At human-dog.com, run by Chris Weagel, a St. Clair Shores (Mich.) video producer, visitors can watch a spare, silent film showing an anonymous person removing a John Kerry yard sign from its metal posts after the Presidential election and taping an upside-down flag in its place.

Ryan Hodson, a 25-year-old film editor, specializes in videos that mingle the absurd with oddly touching insights. In one clip, she tours her house. In the kitchen, the camera focuses on a pot on a stove as Hodson describes the night her roommate tried to cook Dinty Moore Stew without -- as the camera pans up to recreate -- pouring the food out of the can. In another video, she created split-screen montages of her brother racing bicycles, showing him crashing, and then out ahead of the pack.

The trio are among the pioneers spearheading a fast-evolving grassroots movement. It's an amazing process to watch as creative pockets begin to interact around the country. Garfield, Hodson, and Weagel are all part of a Yahoo! (YHOO) group dedicated to video blogging that was formed in June by Jay Dedman, a New Yorker who works at a public-access TV station.

Tuesday, December 28, 2004

In Mac OS X 10.2.X if you get the error message server-error-service-unavailable when trying to add a printer, here's how to fix it!

SOLUTION:
Create a New Folder on the desk top by pressing Shift+Command+N.
Rename the folder cups.
Click Go in the menu bar then Go to Folder
Enter /var/spool
If there is a cups folder, drag it from the folder and into the trash (if there is no folder, go to Step 6).
Hold down the Command key as the folder is dragged out of the finder window. Release the Command key as the folder is about to be deposited in the trash. This removes the need for authentication.
NOTE: You must be an administrative user whoever for this function to work
If there was no cups or you removed it, drag the new folder into the /var/spool finder window, authentication might be required.
Reboot the Mac
Open the Hard Drive and go to Applications, Utilities and open Disk Utility.app
Select Partition in use
Select the First Aid tab.
Press the Repair disk permissions button and allow it to complete.

84. Eugene Mirman. In an ideal world, Eugene would become the next Seinfeld, dominating airwaves with his deadpan humor (it doesn't get any funnier than drugs and death and sex and children!). For now, though, I'm content with a couple comedy shows a year and the occasional rerun of the Cartoon Network's Home Movies, on which Eugene voices a Russian kid named, simply, Eugene.

Lauren Feldman is featured in this video I edited from footage that was shot by Mark Wuerthner.

The concept and design was initially used for an orginal video by Adam Grinovich called Looking Glass.

What does it mean? you ask.

Hey, it's art!

Earlier this year I was working at MoovLab Boston, producing videos for VOOM's MOOV channel. ON the VOOM network everything is in HD.

The MOOV channel was an arts channel that was like, dare I say it, video wallpaper. Everyone's idea of what is art is different. When I first walked though the door I had my own ideas as to what was art and at the end of my time there, my definition had expanded to include everything.

Part of my job was to digitize the HD footage as part of the process of putting together half-hour segments for broadcast. As I was going through the source tapes of this shoot, I was mesmerized by Lauren. So I took the footage and edited my own piece. Adam liked it an gave me his permission to post this remix of his original idea. He said:

It looks great, I love it, totally changed the feel and pace of the whole thing, real masterful.

Monday, December 27, 2004

Dear Bank of America,
It's nice to see all your pretty red signs go up all over town. You sure can't miss your ATM locations!
One thing I'm not happy with is your change to my ATM Fleet Cash feature. It's not fast anymore.

The way it used to work is that I could key in my PIN # and press the Fleet Cash button from the ATM login screen. Money, cash and a receipt would pop out and I'd be on my merry way. The amount of money that popped out was set by me ahead of time.

Now you've done away with a user defined amout. You must log in, select Fast Cash, press the amount you'd like to withdraw, and if the amout you'd like is not listed, you have to push 'other' and then enter your amout and 'enter'.

So a step that used to take the press of one button, now takes many more steps.

The Fleet Cash feature that allows Fleet customers to withdraw a single, preset amount of money from ATMs will be renamed Fast Cash, and will give you the option of withdrawing several preset amounts.

Please bring back 'Fleet Cash' and while you're at it, let us buy stamps at the ATM again.

We ordered a few drinks and split a meal. A salad split in two was huge! We had hte special house salad which included those cute little pear shaped tomatoes, potato croutons and warm mushrooms. Hello?

The bread basket had to be the best bread basket ever delivered. In addition to an amazing flat bread, and warm Irish Bread, they had pretzel bread! Yup. Soft, warm, and salty pretzel bread. The mustard butter that you spread on that really topped it off nicely.

After eating all this I was thinking about cancelling the dinner. Not.

Then we had a split filet.

After we were done, I asked Michael if he was the best bartender in Boston. He said that actually he was voted as the best in boston for something like five years in a row. We asked him how they decide these things and he told us that there is a ballot in the last Improper Bostonian magazine. There's a link on the Improper Bostonian Home Page.

I'm off to vote for Michael! If you end up at the Smith & Wollensky bar, tell Michael that Steve sent you.

Not something your average Mac user should ever have to do. I've used UNIX before so it wasn't a big deal to me, but if my mom had to do it, it'd be a big deal. I've still got to talk her through Repairing Disk Permissions. That really should be part of the upgrade procedure automatically, if as I hear, it's a required step before and after upgrading.

Based on what I read in the .Mac forums I changed my Internet Connection from Automatic DHCP to Manual and plugged in the correct IP Address, but then the internet wouldn't work, so I had to change it back.

Friday, December 24, 2004

Maybe losing all my bookmarks, subscriptions and RSS feeds is a good thing.

I'm sitting here this morning, visiting a few of my favorite web sites. When I get there, I save the bookmark. Then I take a look at their favorites and see a few of mine. So, I go visit and save a few more bookmarks.

Now I've started to set up a few folders for my favorite bookmarks. There's News, Blogs, Video, Macintosh, and TV and Radio. But wait, I really should be saving these site's RSS feed to add it to my feedreader. Going to a web site to read it is so 2004. Ha!

But not really. I enjoy viewing the sites, with all their happy holiday graphics.

Tabbed browsing allows me to automatically open up all my favorite sites, yet RSS feeds allow me to see only those sites that have been recently updated. Hmm. A dilemma.

I guess I'll set up just a few of my favorites in my feedreader. Btter yet, maybe I'll finally start using and do it all online.

In a sense, blogging is so 2004. The next big thing will be videoblogs. You can fit a rudimentary TV studio in a suitcase -- a laptop, a camcorder, a few cables, and a nearby Starbucks with Wi-Fi you can leech onto to upload your reports. This too will be good. One hundred thousand pairs of eyes looking high and low, versus CBS' staring monocular orb. We'll all turn to the nets to see what they think we should think. And then we'll hit the blogs for the rest of the story.

"Bellissimo" is the latest single to be taken from Ilya's debut album They Died For Beauty which is to be released on March 1st on Virgin Records.

The video is a short film directed by The Guard Brothers and stars Martin Freeman (Tim from The Office) and features him racing across London during rush hour to meet his girlfriend who is on her way back from Paris. This is a beautiful and well produced film and is one of the best videos we've seen in a long time.

Tuesday, December 21, 2004

I went to a funeral today for Paula Schultz, the sister of my best friend, and heard an amazing tribute by a young cousin, Brett.

He spoke of their relationship as being like that of Harold and Maude. It was their favorite movie to watch together. Brett talked about how Paula lived each day at a time and always looked to help others.

That speech, at that moment, was so real. It's moments like that that Jay wants to capture in video blogs.

I spoke to Brett later and found out that he didn't even write it beforehand. It was in inspiring moment.

On the way up to the funeral I listend to Adam Curry's most recent podcast through my iRock, which plays the iPod on the car radio. It started getting static. How could an iPod get static? It was the station I was tuned to, 88.1 A local college radio station was cutting in.

He also reveals behind-the-scenes secrets. For example, he says that when Skipper Jim collapsed during the first challenge, "I specifically asked 'can we go back' but a producer said no and told us to finish. They filmed the 'victory' celebration 8 times, against our protests."

Chip (12:32 PM): i thought you'd be the best person to ask about starting a blog!
Steve Garfield (12:32 PM): I am
Steve Garfield (12:32 PM): shoot
Chip (12:33 PM): ok
Chip (12:33 PM): where do i start?
Chip (12:33 PM): is it easy to upload images and video?
Steve Garfield (12:33 PM): do you have a hosting service
Chip (12:34 PM): not any more
Steve Garfield (12:34 PM): ok so there are a few options
Steve Garfield (12:34 PM): if you want to try out a blog for free you can go to blogger.comSteve Garfield (12:35 PM): then you can use a free web app to load images and post them to your blogger blog
Steve Garfield (12:35 PM): flickr.com is a great way to do that
Chip (12:35 PM): cool
Steve Garfield (12:35 PM): then when you want to host video, you'll need to decide where, archive.org is a free place for video
Steve Garfield (12:36 PM): and they are going to be coming out with a new url for video ourmedia.org in the next few months
Steve Garfield (12:36 PM): so that's the free way of testing the waters
Steve Garfield (12:36 PM): other things to consider would be typepad.comSteve Garfield (12:36 PM): and blogware.comSteve Garfield (12:36 PM): those cost money and I use both of them too
Chip (12:37 PM): damn, you're good
Steve Garfield (12:37 PM): clear and consice
Chip (12:37 PM): you saved me many hours of surfing

MyVirtualBand.com has launched a new service that allows musicians to write and record songs over the internet through "virtual bands." By swapping recorded audio tracks of original instrument and vocal parts, MyVirtualBand.com projects are created from the ground up as open source, continually evolving songs with an emphasis on online collaboration.

''The cool thing about podcasts is I listen to them when I want to," said Steve Garfield, 46, a video producer and editor from Jamaica Plain who has tuned into a podcast called ''Trade Secrets" since it went live on Sept. 1. The show is co-produced by Adam Curry, a former host on the MTV music video channel, and Dave Winer, a software developer who has produced a Google-style search engine called iPodder. Winer's service not only tracks down podcasts, it arranges for new ones to be automatically syndicated to listeners' devices, which can just as easily be personal computers as iPods.

Garfield loves loading up his iPod, before taking a long walk around Jamaica Pond, with the latest edition of ''The Dawn and Drew Show," the real-life and often off-color bantering of a husband and wife in rural Wisconsin. He also likes downloading one of the few mass-market shows now being podcast, ''Morning Stories" on Boston's WGBH-FM public radio station.

A couple of points in the artcle should be clarified, I really said that I've listened to the 'Daily Source Code" since it's first podcast, August 13, 2004.

Saturday, December 18, 2004

The Floating Logos project is inspired by signs perched high atop very tall poles so that they may be viewed from a long distance away. When standing next to these poles, the signs loom over us in such a way that we must crane our necks to see them. The elimination of the poles helps to accentuate the ominous feeling of being beneath these signs as well as serve to disconnect the signs from the ground and reality.

I don't know why this is so exciting. I mean, really it's like videoconferencing. But it feels like we're ape-people stumbling into a pile of polaroid cameras and cell phones, "Also Sprach Zarathustra" is blaring out of an iPod somewhere, and we just start freaking out.

Thursday, December 16, 2004

The term "mash-up" or "bootleg" (or, more commonly, just "boot") describes the result of mixing together two or more records to create a whole new track. Though originally performed live using turntables and DJ mixers, recent advances in sequencing software have taken this art-form to a whole new level. This document outlines how mash-ups can be made using the software package Tracktion.

Technology is moving so fast that there are now a growing number of video bloggers, or "vloggers," who look toward the day when they can produce original programming, bypassing the usual broadcast networks and cable channels. Dan Rather may have done more than legitimize the blogging community with his scandal. He may have helped accelerate a radical decentralization of media power that will turn bloggers into future anchors of their own mini-news programs.

"Garfield belongs to a small but growing legion of video bloggers, or vloggers, who are turning the Web into a medium in which someday anyone could conceivably mount original programming, bypassing the usual broadcast networks and cable outlets."

An interactive online community featuring an array of interactive collaboration tools to help digital divide activists around the world to work together. DDN offers its members free blogging, news and articles on the digital divide, event announcements, discussion boards and other tools. Membership is free and open to anyone interested in bridging the digital divide.

This song was featured in the OC on 9th Dec...You'll hear some crazy guitar from the middle section to the end...that's my mate Jeff (Beck!). He came into my studio in the last few frantic days of me finishing the album. I just HAD to get him on there somewhere! He's totally amazing....

Imogen Heap is my favorite artist. I am so looking forward to her new album when it comes out next year. This track is amazing as is Imogen.

Sunday, December 12, 2004

I'm 37, short, out-of-shape, and happily married. Never did I imagine that trying out for a semipro football team in Boston would lead to the most unlikely bonds among young and not-so-young men -- black, white, and Hispanic, struggling and successful, from Beacon Hill to Roxbury, all still clinging to their dreams.

Monday, December 06, 2004

My mom schedules Hanukkah at her convenience. So we got together on Sunday.

When I was little, I used to get eight presents, one for each night of Hanukkah.

We don't do that anymore. We've pretty much done away with giving each other big gifts. Now we just exchange fun little gifts.

One of the things that we always do is try to guess what's in the package before opening it.
Back when we used to give lots of presents, I was like a genius at guessing. We used laugh so hard at how I guessed what was inside the gifts.

We still try and guess. Mom mom had a lot of fun opening her gifts this year.

John Perkins was recruited in the late 1968 by the National Security Agency, while he was attending business school at Boston University. From 1971 to 1981, he worked for the international consulting firm “Chas T. Main.” He is the author of the new book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.

Mr. Perkins has been working on this book for the past two decades. Until recently, Mr. Perkins says he’s been holding back from publishing this book because of very convincing incentives to refrain from doing so. For example, he says, “I accepted a half a million dollar bribe [from Stoner-Webster] in the nineties not to write the book.”

In the book, he writes, “The book was to be dedicated to the presidents of two countries, men who had been his clients whom I respected and thought of as kindred spirits - Jaime Roldos, president of Ecuador, and Omar Torrijos, president of Panama. Both had just died in fiery crashes. Their deaths were not accidental. They were assassinated because they opposed that fraternity of corporate, government, and banking heads whose goal is global empire. We Economic Hit Men failed to bring Roldos and Torrijos around, and the other type of hit men, the CIA-sanctioned jackals who were always right behind us, stepped in.”

I dropped by our main auditorium yesterday while taking a much-needed respite from some vexing research into the history of Baptist succession, vis-à-vis Waldensian protoanabaptism, to investigate Pastor Fred Hoskins' Cinco de Mayo party, which had attracted quite a few curious people from the local Catholic community seeking to learn more about Jesus. Besides wanting to sate my hunger with some corn chips and avocado dip, I was also curious to hear what sort of music Fred had lined up.

Using custom built record players and variety of other devices, Schaefer explores the spatial and architectural aspects of sound, as well as the twisting of technology. His work incorporates a hybrid of analog and digital techniques, combining field recordings with live, modified vinyl and found sounds to create evocative and involving environments. His self-invented Tri-phonic Turntable is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the "World's Most Versatile Record Player."

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About Me

Steve is a Social Media Traveler. Companies, brands, and destinations send my wife and I on trips in hopes that we will publicly share our experiences via social media. Examples include opening festivities for the Hermitage Club and traveling with GMC to the Super Bowl. (Go Pats!) We are available for more branded experience trips.